Ragnar Zolberg is the best maker of music I've crossed paths with since stumbling on Daniel Romano three years ago. Ragnar is a beautiful soul, his work wrought of love and light. You know what people say about the inherently and eternally unbridgeable abyss between any two given human beings? Ragnar songs make you want to call bullshit. This album is like a boat on the evening sea, an hour from shore, distant lamps gleaming.

Arguably the most starkly beautiful release in Peter Stampfel's magisterial catalogue. Of course it's also hilarious, touching, pissed off, and raw as the sun breaking over the fields. But at its heart there is such sadness, such gorgeous sadness, sadness to be lived in and lingered over, to be confronted and comforted by.

Thunderous roots rock. Great lyrics written from a uniquely contemporary (Twilight Filter) / ageless (Lost in the Woods) perspective. Stunning vocal tone. Beautiful, winding vocal melodies. Amazing, amazing harmonies. And the four catchiest songs I expect to hear until the next Florida Man.

Hey you there, do you love Jeffrey Lewis? Do you love Peter Stampfel? Are you intrigued by the notion of music that has spent so many years secretly soaking in laughter and joy that it is downright psychedelic to look upon? Both Ways is a towering achievement, the culmination of a decade's friendship and mutual inspiration, a behemoth of a double album, spectacular, unique. It is a signpost for drifting souls. Listen, laugh, wonder, delight, be made new. And play Orgone Accumulator fucking LOUD.

The Abstract Expanse is like small boats sailing into a vast dark sea. Manifest Expanse is like a peak on the horizon. Above its massive central riff hovers a synth (?), the vehicle for Daniel's gorgeous solos. But though the synth is the "lead" instrument, it bows to the riff every thirty seconds. The synth is like birds that flap up from their high perches to greet the dawn. Looking from afar, you notice them, dim shapes against the brightness, but mostly you notice the mountain.

Do you like the theme that runs through Dandelion? Do you like The Outward Conscience? Do you like the glow of the sacred that pulses forth from Finally Free? All right then, try The Abstract Expanse. Yes, you can call it "ambient." Yes, you can call it "new age." You can also call it "25 minutes in which Daniel Romano adorns a spooky beat with beautiful, ruminative solos on a variety of cool instruments." Some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlight's stream, indeed.

Tracks 3-5 and 11 are more of Daniel's wonderful, passionate, tender, truthful, and singular love songs, as good as Bob Dylan's on Lost on the River, or those Paul wrote for Linda in the early '70s. The warmth and intimacy of the album call Virgo's Fool to mind. The rapid succession of great short tracks on Side B is kin to the Side B medleys on Abbey Road and Memory Almost Full, an art form too long neglected. But of course, ultimately, the music is pure Daniel, like no other. All bow down.

My typical experience with a new album from Daniel goes like this. On first listen, all I can hear is the genre trappings. By the sixth or seventh, I've noticed some cool details and am getting a few melodies stuck in my head. By fifteenth listen, I've realized how ingeniously constructed the songs are. Twentieth listen, I'm swimming in beauty, basking in it, luxuriating in it, awed and moved by it, on every track. And by thirtieth listen, all I can hear is soul.

In the half century since Wings gave us Red Rose Speedway, I don't think the world has been invited to as sumptuous a feast of melody as Daniel Romano's Dandelion. And what beautiful, tender words. "There are some folks—can you believe it?—that are acting like it doesn't matter I'm in love!" By the way, make sure you listen to this album in full. Side B gains so much by accumulation.

Seven Daniel Romano originals and three traditionals add up to the most nakedly beautiful album our man released in that fruitful year 2020. Side A is my favorite vinyl side (or digital equivalent) in Daniel's discography. The vibe, the chord progressions, the guitar work... would I love the album more if every song were a Kelly/Daniel duet ala Streets of Derry? Definitely. But with something as gorgeous as A Splendour of Heart, to nitpick is to blaspheme.

This and Bleedin' Hearts were my gateway from Fire on Fire, one of the finest bands I knew, to the band that became my favorite band of all. Bleedin' Hearts is like Fire on Fire a few cubits underground, but this grabbed me harder, perhaps because it was clearly NOT Fire on Fire. Where were these two songwriters headed? Why did the sixth track sound good even when played on repeat for four hours? Why did the closer, so gentle, so gentle, keep sending chills down my spine?

Not enough of the great songwriters have written 22-minute songs. Paul McCartney used to, and Ian Anderson, Bob Dylan, Roger Waters. Ragnar Zolberg, recently. Now, with this brilliant, brilliant song, Daniel Romano joins their ranks. Forever Love's Fool may not be as first-listen WTF AWESOME as Finally Free or Visions of the Higher Dream, but after enough spins, every segment blossoms into earworm-infested glory. Godspeed, Daniel Romano. Ride on.

A concept album, about a great temple?—where A1 details its construction; A2, the peak of its fame; A3 contemplates the abandoned edifice; in B1, only dirt remains; and in B2, the whole continent the temple once stood on has been eaten by the sea. Side A is bone-raw rock-&-roll, the descendant of such extremes as the Flower Travellin' Band and Neil Young's Reactor. It's followed on Side B by a sad, ecstatic beauty that I think is unique to Caleb and Colleen's joined hands.

Muddy, psychedelic hymns, coarsened by grimness and dust. The joy at the center of Big Blood is a quiet, dim smolder instead of the usual blaze. The two takes on Coming Home are strange and wonderful as baby birds hatching. Who but Colleen and Caleb could hear them and imagine the lush, sad, starlit epic that closes Dark Country Magic?

In the midst of the psychedelic vortex that surrounded our daughter's birth, I would sometimes take the elevator twenty-something floors down from the hospital's maternity wards to pick up orders of fruit. The music I listened on the way needed to be something that could look me in the eye and recognize me in the haze of the mystery and not be obliterated. The playlist ended up being four Big Blood songs. So Old Again and Apes & History were two of them. I chose well.